Top 3 Training and Content Power Combos

Today’s salesforce is busier than ever because today’s buyers are busier than ever. Potential customers are autonomous, in-the-know, and bringing their ever-increasing expectations to the market.

Regardless of where they’re at in their journey, modern buyers expect immediate communication and prompt service. Additionally, buyers no longer look for vendor validation. They trust the opinions and shared experiences of other buyers rather than the vendor behind the service or product. Buyers execute a significant portion of their own research and assume that once they’re ready to engage with a rep, the seller knows where they are in the journey while enhancing and endorsing already acquired knowledge.

Needless to say, today’s buyers are altering the market with new behaviors and new expectations. For sales reps to keep pace, let alone anticipate buyers’ changing demands, they need the right combination of tools and training to seize every potential sales-ready moment. After all, when a rep lands even a minute with a busy buyer, it’s essential that those 60 seconds get utilized to their fullest capacity.

Keep pace with the speed of change with meaningful training. Take a tour of Lessonly to see how sales teams do better work with Lessonly.

To ensure your rep is ready, here are the top three selling scenarios to ensure you have both the training and content needed for successful selling:

1. Spur-of-the-moment

Scenario: Your competitor just launched a new product feature to help them win a specific deal your rep is working—right as your rep is prepping to walk into a meeting for that deal.

Training + Content: You need to be able to provide your rep with the ability to combine content—in this scenario, perhaps an updated customer-facing battle card—in the field prior to walking into that meeting. It’s also important to ensure the rep has the right sound bites to help them understand how to position against the recent competitive product launch.

In order for reps to fully utilize sales opportunities—however short the notice—they need to know that marketing (yes, marketing) has their back. Regardless of the age-old rift between sales and marketing departments, it’s important to remember that both teams are gunning for the same end goal. In previous years, it was believed that sales and marketing each upheld their specific roles within the selling cycle: marketing generated leads for sales, and sales reps qualified these leads, ultimately landing sales and churning profits. However, the pace at which buyers—and the market—continue to evolve is proving this internal model obsolete. The reality now is that sales and marketing must be highly intertwined to succeed. Team members on both sides must be tuned-in to the needs, motivations, and challenges they each face throughout the buying process. In the case of a new and sudden competitor product launch, that means that marketing needs to focus on quickly creating compelling content to arm sales—and the sales team needs to be trained to know where to look for the latest and greatest positioning, messaging, and other competitive content.

With sales and marketing working in-sync, situations such as the above are easier and more efficient to navigate. Marketers are looped into the recent product launch, aware of the upcoming talking points sales reps need to touch on, and able to create and customize relevant content that propels the sales team forward. The result? Sales reps who are well-prepared to find and leverage the right content at the right time.

2. Back to basics

Scenario: Your company is strategically positioning themselves to enter a new market—and your rep needs to know the right questions to ask and the proper demo scenario for their first deal in this new market.

Training + Content: Understanding the right verbiage to use within new markets is vital and can make or break a deal. Your rep needs access to the internal discovery questions to ask as well as the ability to test themselves on their knowledge on the new market.

Entering a new market can be incredibly intimidating for reps. In order to ensure success and optimize reps’ abilities prior to selling to new territory, ask marketing to assist sales by creating engaging content that reps can utilize out in the field. Make each asset as specific and relevant as possible, ensuring reps can easily integrate it into their deal. Consider integrating solutions that would enable reps to create and customize content that is unique to them, but that also stays on-brand.

3. Continual relevancy

Scenario: Your seasoned rep went through onboarding a decade ago and only receives training once a year at the annual sales kickoff event—but a new product release mid-year requires the rep to relearn how they sell it now.

Training + Content: Your rep needs the latest and greatest customer-facing product brochures, paired with bite-sized training components that allow them to relearn how to sell it.Content specifically designed to train your sales reps (e.g.: information around company messaging, product news, or product launches) needs to stay current, accessible, and contextual to current selling scenarios. In order to establish if and how your reps have the right tools, consider the following:

Have your reps completed assigned training?

Does your sales team have real-time access to tools to help fulfill content requests (e.g. marketing materials, proposals, contracts) for buyers?

Are reps employing the correct kind of content, at the right time?

Depending on factors such as team size, business complexity, and cadence of org-wide expansions, updating training content will vary. Identify where training content currently lives and create a single, digital space where reps can refresh best practices and access updated information around product messaging. Update all out-of-date content for accuracy and create fresh assets that are approachable, engaging, and customized to the specific needs of each rep.

Most importantly, make sure reps can access training materials easily on the go. The easier these assets are to reach, the higher likelihood that reps will actually utilize them to land sales. Be sure to include relevant stakeholders in the training content process, as sales leadership will be implementing team-wide changes.

Empowerment + Preparedness = Success

Modern buyers are a breed of their own—independent, knowledgeable, and expectant. Because buyers have changed, gone too are the days of the “stereotypical sellers” who simply show up to push products so they can “always be closing.” Today’s buyers want savvy guides, ready and able to lead them through their purchasing exploration. But before sellers can leap into conversations with buyers to meet these expectations, sales reps need immediate and seamless access to content, tools, and training in one, streamlined place provided by sales enablement.

From aligned marketing and sales teams, to curated content and accessible training materials, the right balance of empowerment and preparedness can make or break your reps’ deals. Providing your sales team with the right combination of tools and training better empowers them to land sales going forward.

Build dynamic sales enablement with Lessonly

Hundreds of sales leaders use Lessonly to enable learning, practice, and performance on their teams. Managers and trainers create intuitive lessons for every type of sales scenario. The results? Better training, happier employees, and more closed deals. Tour Lessonly today.

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